Stealing Heaven (11 page)

"Absolutely," Mom says, and I know that means I'll come
back to find the bottle exactly as full as

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it is right now. I sigh, lean over, and kiss her cheek.

"I'll see you later."

She waves at me over one shoulder, already turned away and
watching the coffeemaker, just waiting for that first cup to brew. I leave and
drive back to the grocery store. For my "date." With a cop.

I park pretty far away--it's bad enough he's seen the car once
already--and walk to the store. Greg's there, and his car isn't what I figured
a cop's non-cop car would be like. For one thing, it's a station wagon. For
another, the back bumper is covered with stickers, all for bands I've never
heard of. Cops always drive horribly practical sedans or huge pickup
trucks/SUVs, and they never have bumper stickers'. At least not like these.

"This is your car?"

"Uh oh, jumping straight into questions. This can't be good.
You don't like it?"

"No, it's actually--it's just not what I thought you would
drive."

He laughs. "You know what? I figured you'd take one look and
say it matches my hair or something."

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I look over at him. "Well, now that you mention it..."

He grins and I grin back. I tell myself I'm only doing that
because I have to. I mean, someone smiles at you, you're supposed to smile
back. The fact that I want to isn't important.

"Ready to go?"

I nod, and get in the car. I've never been in a station wagon
before, or at least not one like this, with its bumper stickers and signs of
its owner's personality everywhere.

I've also never been on a date.

Or gone somewhere voluntarily with a cop.

"You okay?" he says. "You seem a little worried. I
know the car doesn't look like much, but it runs really well."

I nod again, and notice I'm twisting my hands together in my lap,
like I'm nervous. Which I am, but I know better than to show it. Why did I
agree to this again?

He glances at me, gaze lingering on my arms for a moment--I force
myself to still my hands--and then starts the car.

"See?" he says, grinning, and I know exactly why

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I agreed to this.

I want to be here.

"So, what happened?" he asks as we pull out of the
parking lot.

"With what?"

"Your arm. You've got a wicked scar."

"What?" I clear my throat, thinking of the dog that bit
me. Of why the dog bit me. Of just why I really shouldn't have agreed to this,
no matter how much I want to be here. "You--you want to know what happened
to my arm?"

"Well, yeah. If you want to talk about it, that is. I mean,
I'm pretty sure I know what happened but..."

He knows? How could he. know? Unless --I look over at him. Does he
know who I am? Who I really am?

"It's okay," he says, his voice gentle. "I
understand."

He holds his right arm out toward me. At first I don't see
anything but then I look closer, see a series of faint thin white lines
crossing his wrist.

"Oh. You got bit by a dog too?"

"I--wait. You got bit by a dog?"

"Yeah, a poodle. And before you laugh..." I look

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over at him. He's not laughing. In fact, he looks kind of stunned.

I look at his arm again. I look at him.

I look at him, and I understand what happened.

I met a girl worth three quarters of a billion dollars at a party
once. She had the saddest eyes of anyone I've ever met and a row of white lines
on her wrists, scars so thick her skin was just a faint tinge under them.

"You---" I don't quite know what to say. I mean, I
do--you tried to kill yourself--but his expression is this weird mix of pain
and embarrassment and what looks like a kind of angry fear, and what I end up
saying is, "You have them on your other arm too."

He doesn't say anything, doesn't even move, but then he slowly
nods.
Yes.
When he does, I lean over and touch my fingers to his wrist
because I know how it feels to have to live with something you wish wasn't
true.

"I was fifteen," he says quietly. "It happened just
after my dad died. He was driving home, pulled over to help what he thought was
someone with a flat tire, and got shot."

"Shot?"

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"Yeah. He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. The
thing is, the last time I saw him we'd fought. He'd found drugs in my room and
went crazy, said all the things cops do--'Drugs kill, you don't know what I
see'--all that stuff. I told him he was full of shit; I hated that he was a
cop, hated what everyone thought it meant about him, about me--it was like it
defined all of us. I told him that, he died, and I thought..."

He drums his fingers on the steering wheel. "I kept thinking
about what I'd said to him, about what he'd said to me. So, the day after the
funeral, I took all the drugs I had and then opened a package of razor blades.
I don't even remember doing it, I was so gone. Dad's partner found me. He'd
come over to see how Mom was doing, came back to my room to talk to me. I was
so fucked up I didn't do a very good job, just hacked my skin up, mostly, and
so he patched me up, had a doctor friend of his come over and check on me later
so I wouldn't have to go to the hospital. So Mom wouldn't have to go back to
the hospital."

He blows out a deep breath. "I've--I've never told anyone
about it before. I just... I thought you--"

"My father's gone too. Not dead, but he might as

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well be. So I--I know I don't understand, not really. But I do
know what it's like to lose someone. I know how much it hurts when you don't
get to say goodbye the way you wish you could have."

He nods. "You know what I remember most? Not the funeral, not
even the moment when the doctor came in and told us Dad was gone. I remember
what Mom said to me when I woke up afterward, how she checked my wrists and
then said, T want to tell you a story.' She told me about Dad's first case. He
found a thirteen-year-old dead from an overdose--no witnesses, no nothing, just
a dead kid. They couldn't even find someone to claim the body. He told her
about it when he got home and she said all the stuff people say, that it's so
sad, so terrible. She asked him how he could handle knowing things like that
would happen over and over again, how he could deal with the world being like
that. And he said, 'Maybe I think the world can be different.' She said she
thought I'd know what he meant."

"Do you think he's right?"

"I don't know. Sometimes I think that yeah, maybe. Other times...other
times I'm not so sure. I think things aren't as simple as he thought--he was

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a cop cop, you know? Everything was either right or wrong for him,
nothing in between. But he wanted to make things better, and that--that's
something I can believe in. I just wish I'd seen it earlier. Before he was
gone."

'I think ... I think sometimes that's how it is. Sometimes people
have to go before you ^before you get stuff. Before you can really get
it."

"Yeah," he says. "It sucks that they have to go in
order for it to happen, though."

"But at least then you know," I say, and now I'm
thinking of my father. "I mean, sometimes a person sticks around but might
as well be gone, you know? They're there, but when you're with them what you
get is so close to nothing it might as well be that."

"It could change, though. You've got that."

"Right, because when the first thing they ask is how long
you'll be around, it just means they're afraid or something. It's such crap.
It's just...it's all they can give. All they're willing to give. But the worst
part is that you can't help thinking 'maybe' even though it's stupid and then,
when they finally do go, you feel so hurt and ..."

I trail off, and look out the window. I haven't said

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this much about my father ever. Not even to Mom.

"I --"

"Don't tell me you feel sorry for me," I say, angry with
him for bringing up stuff I don't like thinking about. Angry at myself for
being so drawn to him. "'Sorry' is bullshit and it's always followed by
more bullshit."

"You're right."

I look over at him, surprised.

"You are," he says. "It's all I heard after Dad
died. Everyone was sorry, so sorry. After a couple of weeks, I never wanted to
hear the word again. Things... well, things suck sometimes. And sometimes you
can fix it. And sometimes you can't. It's just the way it is."

"Do you miss your dad?"

"Yeah. You?" He looks over at me, his crazy hair shining
in the sun, and the understanding in his eyes makes my own sting a little.

"Yeah," I say. "I miss him."

There's a crowd of people waiting to get on the ferry, and as Greg
and I join them I get elbowed by someone swinging around a video camera. Greg
catches my arm when I stumble and suddenly we're standing

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very close to each other.
^:

"Hey," he says, "you okay?" and for a
second-just a second only, I swear--I wish he'd kiss me.

That scares me. It scares me a lot.

"I'm fine." I take a step back, putting some distance
between us. "Do you think they'll actually let us on the boat soon, or
will we have to stand here and stare at it for an hour or something?"

"Two hours. Three at the most."

"Oh, okay then," I say, and someone behind us yells,
"Hey, I just heard they won't be letting us on the boat for three
hours!" We grin at each other.

They do let us on the ferry eventually, and Greg and I end up
standing out on the deck. It's loud: the slap of the ocean against the boat,
the sound of the engine, the wind blowing all around us. We stand by the
railing together, in silence, and it's not weird or anything. It's nice.
Comfortable.

"We're almost there," he says after a while, leaning
toward me. "This is my favorite part--the whole place just sort of
suddenly comes into view."

I look out at the ocean. He's right. The island is a speck at
first and then a larger one and then suddenly it's a place and I can see grass
and homes

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and narrow winding roads.

"It's ..." It's alone, one small island in the middle of
the sea, and yet it doesn't look lonely. I've never seen anything like it.

"I know," he says. "Pretty amazing, isn't it?"

I nod and look over at him. He's looking back at me, a little
smile on his face.

"What?" I say.

"Nothing."

"You're smiling."

"So? I smile all the time. Not like some people."

"What are you saying?"

"What do you think I'm saying?"

"I think you're a pain in the ass."

"There we go," he says. "I knew I could do
it."

"Do what?"

"Make you smile."

"I'm not smiling," I tell him. But I am. I can feel it.

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15

When we leave the ferry we walk up to what Greg tells me is
"the town." It's nothing but stores and an amazing view.

"You want to look at anything?" he asks, pointing at the
stores.

"Hell, no." I know a racket when I see one and I'm sure
this "town" makes a fortune from people who run around buying things
simply because they had to ride on a boat to get here.

"Okay, that wasn't even a question," Greg says.
"We're definitely getting out of here." He starts walking, heading
away from the stores and up a narrow road. I watch him for a second, just sort
of...caught, I guess, by how easy it is to talk to him, to hang out with him.

"You coming?" he asks, looking back at me, and

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then he grins. "Or are you checking out my ass?"

I roll my eyes and walk up to him. "Please. You don't have an
ass."

"I knew you were checking it out! And I do so have--" He
twists, looking back over his shoulder. "Well, okay, maybe not in these
pants. But I do, really, I swear. And it's actually quite--"

"I so don't need to hear the rest of that sentence," I
say, and start walking. He laughs and catches up to me.

We walk for a while. The road gets narrower and hillier. It's
amazingly quiet. All I can hear is the ocean, the wind, and the occasional car,
most of which are some kind of tourist taxi.

At first we also get passed by a lot of people on bicycles, but
they start to thin out as we keep walking, and by the time we've walked up our
fifth hill all I hear is the ocean and the wind and our footsteps.

"So where are we going?" I ask.